


With You, Always

by theroyalsavage



Category: Countdown to Countdown (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Inappropriately timed smooches, Introspection, M/M, SUPER liberal use of tech terms but hey that's the star wars way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 02:09:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14684235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theroyalsavage/pseuds/theroyalsavage
Summary: Iris Black's quiet life is turned upside down when he purchases two droids from a group of scavengers. One cocky pilot, a rescued princess, and a destroyed battle-station later, he thinks maybe he's found something he never knew he was looking for.An AU based off of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.





	With You, Always

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was commissioned by the incredibly talented creator of the Countdown to Countdown webcomic, Xiao! If you haven't seen her work yet, you can find her on Twitter @velsmells and Tumblr @velocesmells, and you can read CTC here:
> 
> http://ctccomic.com/

Sometimes, when the ship is quiet, and everyone else has fallen asleep, Iris lays awake, and remembers.

It has been months, now, since he left. More than months, maybe - close to a year. He hasn’t really been keeping track. Most of the time, Tatooine - the farm, his family, his home - feels like something separate from himself. Like a place he visited in another lifetime.

Certain memories are more vivid than others, like the way the double sunsets stained the sky a thousand different shades of purple, and the feeling of hot sand against the soles of his bare feet. Some memories are fuzzier, and come more slowly; his mother’s smile, her laugh, the way the wind sounded when it swept across the dunes at night. Some memories are gone altogether, lost to time and age and the hundreds of light-years of empty space between them.

Some memories - just a few - burn inside of him like fire, no matter how much time passes. No matter how profoundly he changes.

They remain.

 

☆ ☆ ☆

 

It begins when Iris buys two droids off a group of scavengers from the desert. He doesn’t have particularly high hopes for them; his mother had asked for a couple extra hands for the farm, the cheapest he could find, and the first R2 unit he’d picked up had malfunctioned within a couple seconds. He doesn’t exactly get a warm, fuzzy feeling when the golden, humanoid model - “ _Call me C-3PO!_ ” - starts talking his ear off right off the bat, either. The price range was affordable, though, and it means a couple less hours for him in the burning heat of the moisture farm, so Iris isn’t going to complain.

Back in the relative cool of his bedroom, Iris sits down at his desk and gets to work. C-3PO sits and chatters cheerfully while Iris runs his hands over the R2 unit, which gives a rather weak _beep_ in protest.

“Look, I gotta make sure you’re not gonna melt in the heat,” Iris mutters, not exactly sure why he feels the need to justify himself to a robot.

“Be careful with him! He’s had quite a long day,” C-3PO chirps, from across the room, and Iris sighs.

“Yeah, I figured.”

C-3PO is right, though, the R2 unit is… battered. It looks like an older model, banged up, the dark blue trim chipping away in places. Iris touches the droid carefully, cautious of any moving parts, any pieces that feel particularly rusty or thin.

And then his hand bumps against something, and that something gives. Iris freezes, the R2 unit lights up, and an image is projected directly into the center of Iris’s bedroom.

“What,” Iris says, “the fuck.”

The projection wavers, breaks for just a second, before stabilizing and catching on the image of a beautiful, wide-eyed girl with an immense cloud of hair and a look of profound panic on her face.

“ _-P-please_ ,” she says, her voice rushed and choppy with static. “ _M-my ship has fallen under attack -- I have placed information vital to the s-survival of the Rebellion in the memory systems of this R2 unit. M-m-my father will know how to retrieve it -- This is our most desperate hour. Whoever finds this, I beg you. H-help me. You’re m-my only hope_.”

The projection flickers for a few seconds, and then fades to darkness.

For a long moment, it is silent.

And then the R2 unit swivels, slowly, to face Iris, and beeps.

“No,” Iris says, flat. “No. Nope. No _way_.”

R2 beeps again. More insistently this time.

“She doesn’t mean _me_ ,” Iris says, gesturing a little frantically at the place where the projection had appeared. “She means… a fighter, or a pilot, or a member of the Rebellion! I’m nothing, I’m-”

R2 makes a low, humming noise and then beeps again.

“ _I’m_ her only hope?” Iris whispers, voice cracking.

“I’m afraid so, sir,” C-3PO says, and Iris begins to realize that he might have, perhaps, gotten more than he had bargained for this afternoon.

“We have to go, then,” Iris says. “We have to-”

And that is when he smells the smoke.

 

☆ ☆ ☆

 

The Cantina is packed when Iris walks in, despite the fact that it can’t be much later than mid-morning. It’s dingy and loud, the air stifling enough to make anxiety coil sharply in Iris’s belly, but not so much so that it’s unbearable.

“Sir, are you sure this is the correct location?” C-3PO asks, an undercurrent of skepticism obvious below the artificial timbre of his voice.

Iris double-checks the piece of paper in his hand, though there isn’t much to look at. Only two things: the Cantina’s coordinates and a name, scrawled in a scavenger’s unsteady hand. Iris has already memorized both of them.

“I’m sure,” he confirms, and leads R2-D2 and C-3PO through the crowd, to a table in the far, back corner of the bar. He slides into a seat and presses his hands together, fitfully, trying to wring the fear out of himself. Trying not to imagine this place, these people, burned to the ground.

_Because of you_ , something small and nasty in the back of his brain reminds him. _Because of you_.

He is not alone with his thoughts for long. Barely five minutes pass before there is a scuffling sound behind him, a quick cough, and then someone is sliding into the booth across from him, propping their chin up on their hands.

Iris recoils, automatically. His fingers curve around the piece of paper tucked against his palm, around the name he’s already committed to memory. Because this man - this smuggler - is strikingly, startlingly handsome, in a studiously haphazard sort of way. His hair is soft-looking, just a little too long in the front and oddly-colored, a shade of pink Iris has never seen before on a person. He smiles, all high cheekbones, complete with the shadow of a dimple cut into his cheek, just below one side of his mouth. His hands are wrapped in bandages, but it doesn’t look like they’re injured.

There is… something about him. A burning, aching sort of something that Iris doesn’t have a name for. Danger? Possibility, maybe. It makes Iris’s throat close up, a little.

“Hey,” the man says, and when he leans forward to shake Iris’s hand, something flips over rather violently in Iris’s chest. “Name’s Lillium. I hear you’re looking for a ship?”

 

☆ ☆ ☆

 

“So, that’s all it said?” Lillium asks, glancing sidelong at Iris from his position at the Millenium Falcon’s controls. They’ve been travelling together for a couple Standard days, now, and Iris is finally at least fairly confident that Lillium isn’t going to murder him and steal the meager amount of money he’s got in his wallet. They get along surprisingly well, all things considered. Despite his flirting and disarming, shockwave smiles, Lillium looks at Iris very intently when he speaks, like he thinks everything Iris has to say is deeply important. And he’s really good at making pancakes in whatever dishware they’ve got, which is a trait Iris appreciates.

“‘Most desperate hour’… ‘our only hope’…” Lillium continues, waving one hand. “I mean, jeez. Could you get any more vague and dramatic?”

“I bet _someone_ here could, yeah,” Iris mutters, and Lillium pouts.

“I have to keep up my aura of mystery somehow,” he says, and pulls on the joysticks casually to send them turning just a little to the left. “No one wants a clever, handsome convoy who isn’t also aloof and unknowable. It’s part of the package.”

“So, no chance of unlocking your tragic backstory, then?” Iris quips dryly.

Lillium shoots him another look, his gaze a little sharper than Iris would prefer. It feels a little like he’s looking through him, when he looks at him like that.

“What’re my chances of unlocking yours?” he asks, and when Iris doesn’t answer, he laughs. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Iris rolls his eyes and scoots his chair further away from Lillium, back towards R2-D2. The droid is recently increasingly willing to accept Iris tinkering around with him, though it still beeps indignantly when Iris’s touches become a little too thoughtless or rough.

“That’s why you’re heading to Alderaan, then,” Lillium says, thoughtfully, while Iris tries, in vain, to access R2’s memory drive. “To bring the droids to this mystery lady’s father, so he can decode them?”

Iris nods absently. There is a shift under his hands, like the panel is beginning to come loose.

“Why don’t we do her one better?” Lillium says. “Cut out the middleman.”

Iris frowns, pushing a little harder on the panel. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, why don’t we just go give the droids to her directly?” Lillium asks, and then he grins, sharp and wicked. “A rescue mission sounds a lot more interesting than a drop-off.”

Iris stares.

The panel gives.

It’s a sufficient distraction for the both of them. “Got it,” Iris says, triumphant, pressing the button to access the droid’s memory logs. And then the cockpit goes dark, and, from what feels like the inside of Iris’s head, a deep, softly accented voice says, “The Force is what gives a Jedi his power.”

“Oh, shit,” Lillium says, eyes wide.

C-3PO says, in a voice of profound concern, “Oh, dear.”

 

☆ ☆ ☆

 

For the rest of the time that it takes the Falcon to reach the coordinates C-3PO had given them - a couple more Standard days, give or take - Iris accesses the rest of R2-D2’s files. There’s a lot of what looks to be military info: battle plans, ship semantics, the blueprints of what appears to be an enormous Imperial base. But there’s a separate database with encoded information describing something else - something strange, and nebulous, and invisible. Something that binds the fabric of the galaxy together.

The Force.

Iris grew up on stories of the Jedi. He remembers listening, mouth agape and eyes wide, as his mother told him softly about a group of individuals who had the power to channel energy of the universe itself. He knows their names, their accomplishments. They were superheroes. Figures of legend. They weren’t _real_.

And yet.

Iris listens. He learns. He closes his eyes, and he opens his palms, and he feels _something_ moving through him. A current. A tide. It is everything, and everywhere, and when he picks up the lightsaber that had been stored in one of R2’s inner compartments, it hums to life in his hands. Ready, like it had been waiting for him.

“This is nuts,” Lillium says, a little kindly, the first time he finds Iris sitting on the floor of the main seating room, trying to track the flow of the universe. “This is nuts,” he says, more high-pitched and frantic, when he finds Iris with the lightsaber in his hands, moving slowly and deliberately but naturally, easily, like he’d been born with the weapon in his hands. “This is _nuts_!” he says, half terrified and half delighted, when he finds him in the bunk room, the pieces of Lillium’s chess set floating around his head like he’d switched on zero-g.

“May the Force be with you,” R2’s recording tells him, before it switches off.

And it is, Iris realizes, with something like elation.

It is.

 

☆ ☆ ☆

 

If you told Iris a few weeks ago that, in the near future, he’d be rescuing a princess from the inside of an Imperial warship dressed as a Stormtrooper, he’d have laughed in your face. If you told him it would’ve involved him ending up waist-deep in garbage, clinging to a handsome man’s hand just to keep his head above the mountain of trash, he would have told you to stop fucking with him. If you told him they would’ve escaped - both the base _and_ the trash compactor - with their lives, he probably would have walked out of the room entirely.

And yet, here they are, smelling like a frankly nauseating mixture of old socks and expired milk but safely back on the Falcon, Lillium already jumping them into hyperdrive.

Lives and limbs intact.

(Though Iris’s coat is probably ruined, and his boots definitely are.)

The woman from R2-D2’s projection, who is doubled over with her hands on her knees, her hair tumbling out of the tight braids she’d kept it in, says, “I-is this how all your rescue missions t-turn out?” It’s meant to sound disapproving, Iris thinks, but there is laughter in her voice, and a big smile on her face. Plus, her tone is definitely softened by the fact that she pulls both Lillium and Iris into a hug before embracing R2 and C-3PO for good measure.

“Goodness,” C-3PO says, like he’d be blushing if he wasn’t made of metal. And then, earnestly: “It really is wonderful to see you again, Princess.”

“I-I’m very glad you two are okay,” she tells the droids, kindly. And then she turns to Lillium and Iris and says, “I-I’m incredibly g-grateful to you both. You have done m-more than I ever could have asked already. B-but, um... I-I’m afraid that I must ask you for one more favor.”

Iris sits very still as she explains. The outposts of the Rebellion, R2’s coding hiding the blueprints for a weapon the size of a sun. The destruction of Alderaan.

The Death Star.

“I-I hope you understand the gravity of this situation,” Begonia says, very seriously. “W-we need your help.”

Iris shakes his head. “But what could _we_ possibly-”

“I won’t do it,” Lillium interrupts.

Begonia and Iris both stare.

“Lillium,” Iris begins, quietly, stretching a cautious hand towards him.

Lillium shakes his head. “If you want to run a suicide mission, I won’t stop you,” he tells Iris, low and fierce. “But I’m not dyin’ yet. No way.”

“I-it doesn’t have to be a s-suicide mission,” Begonia says. “I-if you help-”

“I might live, yeah,” Lillium says, sharp. “Or I might die. Or Iris. Don’t act like you can see the future, Your Worship. We could all end up flambéed out there.”

“Y-you rescued _me_!”

“That was before I realized what I was getting myself into,” Lillium snaps. “And I’m not dragging Iris into this war.”

“You’re not my commanding officer,” Iris begins, heated.

“No,” Lillium says. “No. I’m your friend. And I’m not throwin’ myself in the crosshairs of the Empire just to watch you die.”

And then he switches the Falcon onto autopilot and strides out of the cockpit, tossing, “I’ll drop you off at the next Rebellion base we pass, and then I’m out,” over his shoulder as he leaves.

There is a moment of silence. Begonia’s expression is a mixture of disappointed and soft, and she opens her mouth to say something, but Iris cuts her off.

“So we destroy the Death Star,” he says, and he tries not to think about the weird empty space that seemed to tear open in his chest when Lillium left.

Begonia nods. Steady.

“W-we destroy the D-Death S-Star,” she says.

True to form, Lillium drops them off at the nearest Rebellion outpost. Before he leaves, he touches Iris’s shoulder, just for a second, and says, quietly, “You can come with me. If you want. You... have a place here.” And, when Iris shakes his head mutely, he climbs back into the Falcon, and then he is gone.

 

☆ ☆ ☆

 

They live.

Lillium’s voice carries through Iris’s headset and the Force moves through Iris like a wave and the Death Star goes up in flames.

And somehow, like a miracle, they live.

 

☆ ☆ ☆

 

Iris steps out of his fighter and onto solid ground with shaking legs. The Rebellion is up in arms, people shouting and sobbing and yelling each other’s names, and, when he emerges onto the tarmac, a roar goes up through the crowd. Begonia reaches him first, grabbing his hands and jumping up and down. Iris squeezes her fingers and beams, but he is looking over her shoulder, looking towards the other fighters, looking-

“Iris,” a voice says, near his ear, and Iris spins around and _launches_ himself into Lillium’s arms. It’s maybe a little overly aggressive, but Lillium catches him with a delighted, breathy laugh, and Iris clutches onto his dumb, stupid vest, fingers tight in the fabric. Lillium’s arms close around his waist and his head drops onto Iris’s shoulder.

“You came back,” Iris says. “I told Begonia, I said… You really came _back_ -”

“I wasn’t going to,” Lillium admits, a little muffled by Iris’s shirt. “And then I realized I’d forgotten to give you something.”

Iris laughs, breathless, heady with victory and with the feeling of Lillium’s heart drumming against his own and with the way Lillium lifts his head to look up at him. Like he’s the most important thing in all the galaxies.

“Oh, yeah?” he says. “What’s that?”

“This,” Lillium says, and he grins - cocky and lopsided and dimpled - and then he leans in and presses his mouth against Iris’s, swift and sure, like he’d been waiting to do it his whole life. And Iris reaches up to cup Lillium’s jaw in his palms, and he kisses back.

The Rebellion goes up in near-deafening cheers.

“Oh, gracious,” says C-3PO.

“I-I _knew_ it!” says Begonia.

“I missed you,” says Iris, against Lillium’s lips.

And Lillium laughs and says, “I know.”

 

☆ ☆ ☆

 

Sometimes, when the ship is quiet, and everyone else has fallen asleep, Iris presses his eyes shut. He tries to call to the things he has buried inside of him, the things he has folded and filed away.

He is different, now. Altered. The Force is a living thing inside of him, a second heart. He feels it thrum inside his chest, a steady pulse. Always.

Sometimes, when the ship is quiet, Iris turns over in the bunk, and allows himself to reach out. His fingertips meet warmth, and Lillium turns towards him, sleepy. Sometimes, he’ll press a careful kiss to Lillium’s jawline, burrow himself back into Lillium’s arms. Sometimes, Lillium’s eyes will flutter awake, and he’ll lean forward and clumsily kiss Iris back.

Sometimes, when the ship is quiet, Iris remembers.

But most of the time - curved, parenthetical, against Lillium’s side - he sleeps.


End file.
